Weak Sales: Nintendo Reports Net Loss In First Half Of Fiscal 2010

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Nintendo today reported [PDF] it swung to a net loss of 2.01 billion Yen ($24.5 million) in the first half of fiscal 2010 after recording a handsome 69.49 billion ($850 million) profit in the same time frame last year. It was big N’s first net loss in the fiscal first half in seven years.

In a nutshell, there are three things to blame: the yen’s recent strength, a delay in new hardware (the 3DS will not go on sale before spring 2011) and weak sales of existing game systems.

Nintendo reported that it sold 6.69 million DS systems in the six months leading up to September 30, 2010 – a drop of nearly 50% when compared to the 11.7 million units the company sold in the same time frame last year (DS software sales fell from 71.2 million to 54.8 million globally).

The Wii suffered, too, albeit not as dramatically. Hardware sales were down from 5.75 million to 4.97 million units, while software sales dropped from 76.2 million to 65.2 million.

Nintendo’s financial report from May this year wasn’t really positive either. Good for big N’s future that the 3DS seems to be a real winner.